Lacanian Apostates

Flattery never gets old. It barely ever really ages. It retains its verve and its value, even if it dates to more than a decade ago. In this case, the flattery concerns your not-so-humble blogger.

As you doubtless know, I formerly practiced psychoanalysis, particularly the variety associated with French analyst, Jacques Lacan. I left the fold many years ago and even wrote my final thoughts about the field in a wonderful book, entitled: The Last Psychoanalyst.

Still and all, it was only yesterday that I was apprized of this comment by a British analyst, by name of Owen Hewitson. Despite the fact that I am generally considered an apostate in with Lacanian world, Hewitson recommends that people read some of what I have written. He also recommends the work of another apostate, my friend Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen.

Anyway, here is Hewitson’s description of yours truly:

Second, Stuart Schneiderman. Schneiderman was one of the first Americans to travel to France to study under Lacan and to undertake an analysis with him. He edited one of the early English-language publications on Lacan’s work, Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan. Amongst his other works from his Lacanian era are an interesting book on The Rat Man case history, and Jacques Lacan: The Death of an Intellectual Hero, which traces the fraught and divisive events in Lacan’s School during the time that Schneiderman was part of it in the 1970s, towards the end of Lacan’s life. Personal anecdotes about Lacan as an analyst and the political schisms that dominated his final years are presented by – at least as he tells it – one who did not ‘take sides’.

Schneiderman now practices as a life coach in New York City. He maintains a regularly updated blog on which he posts much that is critical of the psychotherapies. He can also be found on Twitter. His own account of why he abandoned psychoanalysis is on his site here. Schneiderman’s present-day criticisms of Lacanian psychoanalysis are all the more intriguing given that, at least to a Lacanian reader, he appears to now embraces the very ideas that he attacked so effectively before. As a sample, I can recommend his excellent paper on affects written from a Lacanian perspective and available free online here. Scheiderman’s article spurred me to undertake my own study of Lacan’s work on this subject.

So, I am grateful to Hewitson for the compliments. Since his remarks date to before my more recent work, I take the liberty of adding a link to it, here.